


and at the end of it all, there you were

by thundersnowstorm



Series: from what i've tasted of desire [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: ASOIAF Rare Pair Week, Bittersweet, F/F, Femslash February, Post-War for the Dawn, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 23:47:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17908004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thundersnowstorm/pseuds/thundersnowstorm
Summary: When the fires stop burning, when the snow begins to fall anew, two women are left standing. Alone, they are fearsome. But together, they just might begin to heal.





	and at the end of it all, there you were

**Author's Note:**

> Day one of asoiafrarepairs week - ashes/ snowflakes.

Ash was falling from the sky, soft as the snow beneath her boots. Sansa brushed a sooty flake from her hair, staining her fingers grey in the process. She exhaled, her breath crystalizing in the frigid air before her. Her eyes focused on the air in front of her, trying to avoid looking past it to the scene beyond. 

Winterfell. Her home. The home of her father, and his father before him, and on and on, for thousands of years. The once-proud walls were rubble before her. The stones had been grey once, but fire had scorched them black. She could see where the Great Keep had once stood, where her bedroom had once been. The First Keep had endured for thousands upon thousands of years, but no longer. Bodies littered the courtyard before it, but Sansa looked at them and felt nothing. They had been dead for longer than she cared to know, the magic of the Others being the only thing keeping them moving. Their masters had disappeared, back into the ice and wind from whence they came.

Behind her, several servant girls were crying, their sobs echoing across the flat hills. Sansa couldn't bring herself to summon a single tear. She had shed them all the night before, loud, ugly sobs that had threatened to drown her. But when she had gone to the Dragon Queen and given her permission to burn it, to burn it all, her face had been dry as a bone.

The wind was freezing around her, but Sansa hardly felt it. She was hollow within, as dead as any of the once-wights before her. Distantly she knew she ought to be rallying the smallfolk, organizing her people to look through the ruins for surviving structures, but all she wished to do was lie down on the soft snow and close her eyes.

 _Forgive me, Father,_ she thought, and almost collapsed with the weight of her emotion.

Without permission, her legs began to move, carrying her into the shadows of what had once been Winterfell. She didn't look down. She couldn't bear to look at the mangled, half-burnt corpses of the wights up close. They had been naught but weapons, flesh reanimated with a facsimile of life, but before that, long ago, they had been men and women.

The air stunk of death. Death had no particular scent, not with the impossibility of rot at these temperatures, and yet everything reeked of it.

The gate to the godswood had somehow survived, the iron twisted almost beyond recognition. The rest of the enclosure was rubble, the trees within reduced to sticks and ash. Ablaze, they had been almost beautiful, but the wind and snow had quenched the fire as soon as it had run out of fuel. Now it was all just white and black and grey, devoid of the vibrant life the godswood had once held.

Her skirts and boots were stained with the ash that coated the ground, but Sansa kept moving. In the distance, there was a flash of red. Not the red of flame, but the red of life's blood. Heart in her throat, she pushed herself forward and there it was.

Untouched, unburnt, the heart tree stood solid before her, its spindly branches stretched up towards the heavens, surrounded by the bloody halo of its leaves. Its face was twisted in anguish, the sap fresh and gleaming wet.

Sansa fell to her knees, the pain from the impact with the ground a distant bother. Ash lay thick in the air here, but she hardly tasted it. It wasn't possible, heart trees were as flammable as any others, and yet here it stood, proud as ever.

 _I'm sorry,_ she thought, she prayed. _I'm sorry Father, Mother, Robb. I couldn't see any other way. This was the price for humanity and I had to pay it, and I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry._

The dead did not speak, but the old gods heard her prayer. The old gods were not gods of many words, but they never needed them. Their grim approval was palpable in the air. Gods have always understood sacrifice.

The thin carpet of ash muffled all sound, but still Sansa heard the person approaching. She didn't need to turn to know who it was.

"Queen Sansa," said Daenerys Targaryen, First of her Name. "My apologies for interrupting, but night is approaching. We need to get the people to Castle Cerwyn before it is too dark." She paused, and Sansa knew she had just noticed the heart tree. "The weirwood, how - "

"The old gods watch out for their own." Sansa wondered if Bran could see them through the gaping eyes of the heart tree.

"Tis a good omen," said Daenerys.

"I hope so." Even with evidence of a miracle before her very eyes, Sansa was reluctant to embrace the sign. The Others may be gone, but winter still stretched before them.

Sansa stood, turning to face the other woman. Daenerys was a small woman, swamped by her heavy furs and battle leathers, but she carried herself like a general, like a queen. Atop her dragons she made for a fearsome sight. She was not a woman anyone would wish for an enemy.

Anxiety tied knots in Sansa's stomach. The alliance between the North and South was a product of wartime, built on the rickety foundation of desperation. With their common enemy dead, Sansa could only guess as to Daenerys's next move.

The wind whistled through the clearing, lifting ash and snow alike. "Winterfell will rebuild," Daenerys said softly. "The North will rebuild. The South will do all it can to help, you have my word." Her violet eyes hid nothing, revealing only sincerity.

Some of Sansa's tension relaxed. "Thank you," she said. "For everything. The North would not be standing without you and your dragons." It was odd, to thank someone for burning your home to the ground. But Winterfell was more than a castle, more than the stones it was built from. The heart tree still stood. That was what mattered.

"But," she continued, "I am sure you are needed in the South. The North is strong, it will manage on its own."

It was a delicate line Sansa walked, ever balancing the needs of her people against their pride. The North was independent for the first time in three hundred years. It had to show the world it could stand on its own.

Daenerys smiled wryly. "I'm sure it must be odd for your people, to have two queens in a single castle. I understand. I do not intend to take your throne from you, Queen Sansa, you have my word on that."

"I don't doubt that, your grace." Trust forged in the wars for humanity was an odd thing, unbreakable in some senses, yet delicate in others.

"But you are right," she said. "My people need me." Daenerys looked up at the clouds, as if searching for something. "I came to Westeros looking for my birthright. But the people don't care about names, families, not after so much war. The people just want peace, stability, and they will bow to anyone they think will promise that."

Not for the first time, Sansa was struck by how young the fearsome Dragon Queen truly was. The two of them had that in common, she supposed, two girls with the lingering shroud of childhood crowned among war and death. Yet any vestiges of youth had long since vanished, leaving only two queens with eyes far older than the rest of them.

"You will make a good queen," said Sansa, and she meant it. She had seen Daenerys ride dragons fearlessly, comfort widows and children, hold her own against the most rancorous of lords. If there was anyone who could rebuild the South, it was her.

Daenerys looked away. "In my life, I have been a princess, a khaleesi, a conqueror. But the Six Kingdoms don't need a conqueror."

"No," agreed Sansa. "They need someone kinder than that. A Mother of Dragons, perhaps?"

Daenerys laughed softly. Her face softened and Sansa couldn't help but notice how beautiful this Dragon Queen was. "You are too kind, your grace."

"Sansa," she blurted out, flushing at how brusquely her words had come out. "Please, you can just call me Sansa."

"Sansa, then." It had been so long since someone had not used a title for Sansa, and it felt like a breath of fresh air. "In that case, perhaps you could call me Dany?"

"Dany." Such an unassuming name for such a imposing woman. "I like it."

The back of Dany's hand brushed against Sansa's. She reached out, twining their fingers together.

"You are a singular woman, Sansa," said Dany, her gaze earnest. "I will miss your company when I return south. Perhaps - if it is not too forward of me - you could write to me?"

They were queens of shattered kingdoms, a queen of fire and a queen of ice, but more than that, they were women, left standing in a world that had tried its best to break them. Dany's hand was warm in Sansa's and for a moment, she did not feel so unmoored, so alone.

"I'd like that," she said.


End file.
